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Melsungen/Tübingen – The medical technology and pharmaceutical manufacturer B. Braun Melsungen AG and CeGaT GmbH in Tübingen have announced the creation of the joint venture CeCaVa GmbH & Co. KG.

The newly founded company CeCaVa GmbH & Co. KG, which is based in Tübingen, is devoted to developing individualized vaccines that are to be used to treat diseases, particularly tumorous diseases. CeCaVa stands for “Center for Cancer Vaccines.”

The company focuses on developing patient-specific vaccines for treating tumors. In doing so, CeCaVa can build on the longstanding experience of CeGaT GmbH in the field of genetic tumor diagnostics.

Dr. Dirk Biskup, Managing Director of CeCaVa GmbH & Co. KG and CeGaT GmbH, explains the newly founded company’s approach: “We are convinced that individualized therapeutic approaches have the highest chance of success because tumors are extremely heterogeneous from a molecular genetic perspective. This also applies when the same tumor entity is concerned.”

CeCaVa has set itself the goal of being able to provide an individualized vaccine to every cancer patient. The vaccine can be tailored to the specific mutations in the respective tumor. Repeat injections of this vaccine should enable the patient’s immune system to better recognize and combat the tumor.

Aesculap AG, a subsidiary of B. Braun Melsungen AG, has provided operational support since the company was formed and will also send Christian Kraft to be one of the managing directors of CeCaVa.

Dr. Joachim Schulz, Chairman of the Management Board at Aesculap AG and member of the Management Board at B. Braun Melsungen AG, is confident about the joint undertaking: “Essentially what we are doing here is combining the comprehensive expertise of CeGaT, one of the world’s leading companies in the field of genetic diagnostics, with the expertise of B. Braun, in order to protect and improve the health of people around the world.”

The next step involves clinical trials that will develop the personalized vaccines into a marketable product. Discussions with partners for the clinical trials are already underway.

About B. Braun

With 63,000 employees in 64 countries, B. Braun is one of the world's leading manufacturers of medical devices and pharmaceutical products and corresponding services. Through constructive dialog, B. Braun develops high quality product systems and services that are both evolving and progressive - and in turn improves people's health around the world. In 2017, the Group generated sales of approx. 6.8 billion euros.

About CeGaT

As a service provider in the field of medicine and biotechnology, CeGaT offers decoding of genetic information and the medical interpretation of the data. CeGaT is the first company in the world to combine human-genetic diagnostics with high-throughput sequencing, a new method for analyzing genetic makeup. In 2010, CeGaT developed so-called “diagnostics panels,” which made it possible to simultaneously decode all of the genes relevant to a disease for the first time.

CeGaT and B. Braun have been cooperation partners for several years. B. Braun holds a 30 percent share in CeGaT. In June 2014, both companies, together with B. Braun Medical US, founded a subsidiary in the USA, B. Braun CeGaT, LLC, which is based in Pennsylvania. In addition, B. Braun Precision Medicine Technology (Shanghai) Ltd. (BBPM) was formed in China in 2018.

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